he is the south korean sensation who has got people around the world a dancing gong i'm styled some i even perform for the president of the united states despite his name to u.s. songs meanwhile several americans are being persecuted for defying the obama administration a look at there's a double standard straight ahead. and it seems like just yesterday the government was dumping buckets of money on fannie mae and freddie mac. to save the troubled mortgage lenders today company execs are living large very large the times of salaries americans would salivate over and we're not just talking a few people here the disturbing numbers coming up in a bit. and we've heard of too big to fail how about too big to cut d.c. lawmakers are fighting hard to protect the military against sequenced ration cuts

we'll take you to the battle over funding and ask if the military is really worth all of the money spent. a good evening it's monday december tenth eight pm in washington d.c. my name is christine and you're watching our t.v. . well if you haven't been dancing to gangnam style you're one of the few who didn't contribute to the song becoming the most watched you tube video of all time with south koreans on station side has a lesser known song that caused him some grief in recent days in two thousand and four saya performed a song that into you at an anti-american fiend concert around the same time that korean missionaries were killed in iraq and just after a u.s. military tank accidentally killed korean schoolgirls i want to tell you about some of the lyrics as there. translated it says kill those f.

ing yankees who have been torturing iraqi captives kill those who ordered them to torture kill their daughters mothers daughters in law and fathers kill them all slowly and painfully well this in stop sign from performing at last night's annual christmas in washington concert where the members of the audience are more famous than the performers among them president barack obama who shook sighs hand after his special christmas version of gangnam style now as i did apologize for the graphic anti american lyrics and it seems it was accepted just as quickly but some people are wondering why the white house so easily led by gone's be bygones with a korean pop star when it wasn't nearly as kind to government employees one of those people is retired colonel morris davis who's currently a professor at howard university university he joined me earlier for more on the obama administration's double standard. well you know i wrote an op ed when late in

two thousand and nine i was on veterans day saying that the obama administration backpedaling and reviving military commissions at guantanamo was a bad idea that having a double standard prosecuting some cases in federal court and others in military commission was setting a double standard and i got my terminations notice from my government job shortly thereafter and for those who don't know you have we have you on the show quite a bit for about for those who don't know you worked at guantanamo bay for seven years as a prosecutor there was the chief prosecutor from two thousand and five in two thousand to two thousand and seven in your resigned from the job during the bush administration because i was opposed to evidence of thing about torture and the political meddling in the trial so i didn't win the republican friends when i quit during the bush administration and then alienated the democrats when i criticize president obama i know you raise them feel some red flags but very few people seem to be concerned not just that this korean pop star got to perform for the president at this event but the people like you like thomas drake that like john kiriakou

have spoken out about government wrongdoing and have been punished for it i mean why do you think so few people are outraged well i think the american public you know the government tends to keep them ignorant and uninformed and i think the example they're trying to say by persecuting people that speak to me is interesting like chim guangcheng you know who spoke out against the chinese government our government treated him like a hero and welcome and you know crocker you here gave him a job at. the harvard so the administration welcomes critics of other governments and then persecute people that speak up about you know people that point out that the emperor here may be a little threadbare on the backside get persecuted and prosecuted you know but little old and broken and bankrupted. for telling the truth and you're not just somebody exercising your freedom of speech you're somebody who is. devoted years if not decades to military service of this writer and talk

a little bit about sort of the evolution that you have gone through as not only an american but as an american who served in the u.s. military well i served for twenty five years because you know we take an oath to defend the constitution and i believe in the constitution i think most citizens think our constitutional rights record of doing granite and it's disappointing when you exercise one and you find out is carved in sandstone instead i think the rights are absolute as long as you don't use them and when you use them you find out that the government may have a different idea so things like free speech and due process and religious freedom and all the other things that we tend to take for granted turn out not to be rock solid as i think most people believe they are so when i got my terminations notice back in two thousand and nine i could have said that. you know the constitution didn't apply to me that would have been a false statement i would have been lying so rather than say that i. stood by what

i said and i got fired talk a little bit about i mean your reaction to some of your tweets i mean you were trying to draw a comparison i don't think that you're somebody that super anti-gun gangnam style but what's the reaction that you got what were people writing back to you well it's a mixed bag i mean there are some that said so i apologize and it seemed to be sincere and i you know i have no reason to doubt that but i was a service member at the time he was inciting people to kill american service members and i had a wife and a daughter that he was saying should be killed slowly and painfully so you know it is a little personal when somebody says something like that but you know he apologized for saying it at least his publicist did but i don't know it may be like the two and a half men star who recently said that the show was garbage and people shouldn't watch it until someone pointed out he makes three hundred thousand dollars a week on that show and he apologized in saying very sincere about it so. i mean the words to me were pretty dramatic i mean there are other foreigners that have

said kill americans and instead they get a hand they got a hellfire missile. the administration's reaction to this one has been a little surprising and i think it is a really interesting comparison to draw i want to talk sort of a bigger picture about something else that's going on a report put together by the u.s. senate committee is almost wrapped up in this report sort of looks at whether so-called you know enhanced interrogation method tactics work in terms of getting information out we're talking sleep deprivation waterboarding and other techniques whether these techniques actually lead to critical breakthroughs now this report is almost wrapped up and there's new evidence coming out that u.s. senators might decide to keep this report under wraps and might not let american people see it i want to get your reaction to this well first off let me say i'm disappointed cathy bigelow's new movie has the dark thirty has gotten tons of you know it's gotten a lot of it right accolades for i'm disappointed that she lied in the movie or

portrays that waterboarding led to the killing of osama bin laden i mean that's just wrong you know it is no factual ever to evidence and there's a lot of evidence that this movie is going to become huge and people who watch it will take it as sort of a nonfiction account as opposed to a fictional account right now i think there will be i think the public that will be their version of the truth so i think that makes the senate report even more important i mean the actions of the senate report investigation looked at were actions taken on behalf of the american people using our tax dollars to carry them out then the senate had this investigation done again using our tax dollars to pay for it so the american people ought to be able to see what is being done in our name and with our money and what the findings are exactly and so why do you think they want to keep this under wraps why do you think they want to keep it as a classified document well i think if you look back at the state secrets privilege . the goes back to the reynolds case over fifty years ago and it turns out that

whole case was built on a lie i think a lot of these cases is not about the future harm which is always what cited national security is in jeopardy and if we tell you know what's going on that will impact future operations but more often than not it's just trying to hide the embarrassment of what happened in the past because this investigation has been going going on for three years and was looking back at policies that were ended a number of years ago so this is not a an ongoing future operation and it's past history but i think there may be some embarrassment there of the people would like to keep under wraps it is interesting though because you did see i mean president obama one of the first things he did when he came into office was to try to make you know this type of torture you know to try to ban it and prevent it from happening any more so so why is it so hard to say you know we messed up we're sorry and we're going to prevent this from happening instead of the findings are hitting you we're not real good at saying we're sorry you know apparently here in this country in the eyes of some admitting

fault is viewed as a weakness and so we never apologize for america and we're really good about wanting to hold other people accountable for their conduct that is the president said you know we're going to look forward and we're never going to look back so all these things that happened in the past that we would condemn others for we've seen pretty comfortable with just pretending that never happened here what about that that all expression those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it it's interesting there is some reason that saying exists and it's unfortunate that we're taking this attitude so hopefully some point in time we will look back and account for what we did in the past and not repeat the mistakes but it certainly didn't seem that this administration who came into office promising a new era of openness and transparency. certainly hadn't lived that out in the first term yeah there is a lot that's not being done there retired colonel morris davis we always appreciate you carl davis is a professor at howard university and former prosecutor at guantanamo bay. well remember back in two thousand and eight when the u.s.

government took over the mortgage mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. few companies buy mortgages from lenders and package them into mortgage backed securities while there's a new report out today by the inspector general's office for the federal housing finance agency that shows that since that time taxpayers have spent one hundred and ninety billion dollars on these companies this is despite a decision earlier this year to cast pay for executives at fannie and freddie at five hundred thousand dollars per year but it turns out that even while the top of the top might have a pay ceiling pay for those in the second and third tier well they're doing just fine the report shows that there are actually three hundred and thirty three employees at the vice president level and they have a median pay of about three hundred eighty eight thousand dollars additionally there are more than sixteen hundred employees at what's called the director level and their median pay is more than two hundred and five thousand dollars per year i want to talk more about this with anthony randolph of the director of economic

research with the reason foundation he's in our new york studios hey there anthony let's talk first about these roughly two thousand employees there about a sixth of the workforce that fannie and freddie and their salaries are well they're much more than most government employees make what is your take on this. a lot more than what most government employees make if if those employees were on the federal pay scale if they were like any other federal employees they would be making minimum half of the salaries that they're pulling down what sort of break this break this down what we're seeing i mean are we creating a system in which citizens are dependent on the government for home loans and yet this same mega-corporation pays its employees extremely generously. what you just pointed out there in your introduction that fannie and freddie been bailed out to the tune of about one hundred ninety billion dollars so far that's only going to go up over the next couple of years as they continue to feel losses that. that coupled with the fact that their staff their executives are making these exorbitant

pay packages particular relative to other federal employees should be a serious concern for taxpayers but not just now this is a concern in two thousand and eleven and two thousand and ten two thousand and nine and one of the things that f h f a regulator that oversees fannie and freddie has said today in response to this concern is we're going to do a full review but this is what they said in two thousand and eleven two thousand and ten i testified that the house of representatives on this very particular topic this has been around for a long time and government really doesn't do anything about it because our leaders in washington are really too scared to take on the reality that we need serious overhaul in housing policy and that's not something that they feel that taxpayers want them to take on because taxpayers don't understand the degree to which we're bailing out fannie and freddie and i took a look at some of your testimony i think it was before a house subcommittee on capital markets and government sponsored enterprises i know that you propose sort of a list of ten things the government should do some of these are things that real

people would really be hurt by if you know congress were to take your advice things but things like you know making it so that you know if you get a home loan if you buy a home you have to put twenty percent down the majority of people who buy a house that's not really realistic and last year you know making those exorbitant salaries that some of these exact that fannie and freddie are making the talk a little bit about this i mean isn't there a way to make it so middle class people in this country can still buy homes don't have to put down tens of thousands of dollars but can make good and pay these loans back like the way it used to be well the way it used to be is that you actually do put down twenty percent and that you saved for ten or twelve or on average it takes the median family an average of twelve to fourteen years to be able to save to put a down payment on a home and that's if you start saving right when you come out of college which means that you're buying a home once you hit your early thirty's. so your big thirty

a lot of them out there underachieving all came out of college before anthony they didn't have one hundred thousand dollars and. i mean that that's a significant problem is going to reshape sort of the future of housing and i think that's important to consider when we talk about people being hurt you know with all of that is actually taking on a mortgage are a good thing you know in your early twenty's coming right out of college do we really want people while they have this huge pile of sort of student loan debt to also take on top of that card debt and our house and as i actually think that trying to make it cheaper to sort of basically subsidize housing could wind up hurting people more which is exactly what we saw in the housing crisis but when it comes to this pay situation for fannie and freddie one of the things that we suggest is look fannie and freddie are basically federal government agencies at this point they've been nationalized for the past four years and ginnie mae as an organization just like they do exactly what fannie and freddie does except they are

also a government entity and they guarantee mortgages that are given out by the veteran's administration and by f.h.a. they're. able to operate just perfectly fine with their employees on federal pay and we think that fannie and freddie should be able to operate on federal pay as well but fannie and freddie is saying here their oversight agency that federal housing finance agency made regarding this decision about executive pay made it so that they weren't able to hold on to some of those top executives some of those people who really have the experience and the problem solving skills that were the best employees because they cut their salaries. and if those salaries were to be cut more for some of these middle tier positions that they just wouldn't have any one good what's your response to that argument. well you know in a certain respect it at least on a gut level if i'm honest with myself it doesn't bother me too much because i think we need fannie mae and freddie mac. to be shut down but honestly i don't want them to be mismanaged because they are still five trillion dollar agencies and they could create

a lot of losses for the taxpayers if they continue to bleed money so i do recognize that they need talent but like i was saying jennie may does exactly what fannie and freddie do except they don't do it for the private sector they do it for direct government guaranteed loans and they guarantee those loans they insure those loans so if g.m.a. can do this and they're able to attract talent and operate media moderately well then fannie and freddie can do that to third they're certainly going to be at a competitive disadvantage with wall street pay packages but so is jenny and jenny is able to operate i don't see why fannie and freddie would be any different i know when this report came out this morning a lot of people were surprised were not surprised were happy to see that there was actually information coming out to show that maybe things are not going to well now that you know the government has taken over these huge mortgage and to take despite that there is no nothing right now that i've heard at least any real plans in the works for congress to get fannie and freddie out of government hands how much

longer do you think anthony until we have some clarity on whether they all remained sort of wards of the government to be perfectly honest i stopped guessing at that you know i figured in two thousand and eleven to begin to love it already been three years and that certainly the time is come and that the tea party had come into the republican party and they were going to sort of like nudge them along towards that directive and at the same time secretary geithner was saying that he wanted to address and so we seem to have the perfect confluence of the white house saying we wanted to address housing and the republican party getting some people that wanted to address housing and then nothing happened they held a few. committee hearings some of which i testified at and then it basically all went away and i don't think that there's a lot of stomach right now in either the white house or the democrats or the republicans in congress. to really take on robustly what this means because of what you're talking about the idea that if we were real if we roll back subsidies means that fewer people might be able to get homes or in the near term it might be a little bit more challenging to get a home in the long term i think that's beneficial because i think houses will be

more affordable if they don't cost as much and i think that will be in a better fiscal position if we're not handing out a lot of cheap loans but in the near term politicians they have voters that they're mainly concerned about and so i'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to get any serious reform of this in the near future yeah certainly a possibility especially in light of reports like this one that lawmakers could take a second look at it it's an interesting stuff and they're out that we thought it was worth reporting on anthony rent as a director of economic research for the reason foundation in our new york studios thanks so much anthony thanks ira. well time now to check in with our web team and see what they're working on today the web producer andrew blake is in the newsroom to bring us more hey andrew you've been working very hard all day today christine for us i am so sleepy it's been such a long monday so what will people see when they click on our web site r t dot com us slash usa is the place to go bunch of great stories today we've got something

about how the u.s. military might be getting some stealth drones for the armed for the air force we got some stories we dissect last week's labor statistics and talk about the actual labor workforce participation rate and what it really means in the grand scheme of the whole thing the recession still being an actual things that you know grim scary stuff you know the usual stuff so you're not going to find they were also something that that we just finished earlier today which i think is a really interesting story for anyone who has to use a computer is our old pal barry brown who is a member barrett yeah there we used to have on the show all the time he said about him all the time until he was sent to prison and i actually just unsealed a new indictment against him the other day and for copying and pasting a link a link to a website where people could download that big stratfor hack from last year or the and went to wiki leaks the big surprise that intelligence company all that data all those credit cards all those e-mails for barrett allegedly sharing that link he's now looking at decades in prison so it's one of the few cases that we've seen in

the last couple of weeks where it seems like they're trying to really hammer out computer laws that don't quite exist so good are to dot com so she would say you can read about the new indictment against barrett brown who's just activist who is a links to the united this collective and then like i said go learn about the drones that are coming over to the air force go learn about the unemployment rate yeah and see what laws are regarding the internet certainly still a wide open field without a lot of ramifications drawn out the web producer andrew blake i think this is review of what is trending today on the web site the web site thanks so much. so how do your on our table members of congress at the deadline for seaquest ration now lawmakers are fighting tooth and nail to prevent const to the military i've not started wants to know if the pentagon is too big to see their budgets one.

r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. well when we talk about going over the fiscal cliff one of the things lawmakers on both sides of the aisle fear most are these massive cuts to the defense budget that would go into effect leaders in washington warn almost on a daily basis that these postpone reductions in defense will hurt national security and lead to another recession but there are some parts of this story that are not being told from uncle and out takes a look. fighter jets patrolling the skies. and well armed battleships sailing the seas the united states has amassed the strongest military force in the world but some in washington believe proposed cuts to the defense department would be devastating defense cuts that i believe would do

real damage to our security our troops and their families and our military's ability to protect the nation in this age of austerity u.s. defense secretary leon panetta painted a doomsday scenario it proposed cuts in the military budget go into effect however even if these cuts go through many analysts believe american military spending will remain bloated and then a lot of americans i think don't realize just how much more powerful our military is than any other military on the planet and. our military spending has gone up every single year that i've been in office the stockholm international peace research institute the u.s. actually spends more on defense than the next thirteen countries combined accounting for twenty percent of all federal spending in twenty twelve part of defense base budget was five hundred fifty three billion dollars not including war funding that's more than twice as large as one thousand nine hundred nine the military has grown exponentially since nine eleven so this is a cut out of out of

a department that is growing measurably so this is not going to decimate us it's not going to be catastrophic however possible reductions to weapon systems has defense contractors were eat their allies in congress have sounded the alarm so up to one million jobs are at risk one report estimates that my home state of mississippi alone could lose more than eleven thousand jobs and many local economies have become reliant on government defense spending including here in southern california where defense and aerospace firms employ thousands of people out of the animal valley and we commonly refer to ourselves as the aerospace capital of the world out there. east of los angeles is. several defense firms deputy l.a. county supervisor norm hickling is worried about job losses if contractors are forced to cut back there is countless small businesses maybe have twenty ten employees that are going to be hurt because they're the ones that supply fasteners in the equipment and supplies to the larger companies so that california is where

defense from north or brahman is building the fuselage for the f. thirty five at one trillion dollars it's the most expensive weapons program in history and has been riddled with delays so we can miss believe that money can be spent better elsewhere this money gets committed to defense contractors and then they have to figure out ways to spend and when they do that sometimes bad things happen the job that relies really on wasting government money is not a job that sustainable in the industry economy studies also show that more money on the fence firms doesn't mean more jobs project on government oversight conducted a study on employment at the top five contractors over the five year period to implement the company's declined even as a total federal contract dollars awarded to the firm's rose researchers found that military spending is one of the least effective ways that the government can create jobs and the military budget it's contractors have been sacred in the past critics when the defense industry is powerful lobbying arm along with the revolving door in

washington there's a huge corruption if you look at the number of generals who then turn around and become senior consultants or senior vice presidents with these defense contractors and they know that it's the classic revolving door while the u.s. grapples with massive debts and deficits current budget reductions will do little to reduce military firepower. or cut prices defense contracts. in los angeles ramon the lindo party. now on to a story of innovation under pressure weapons researcher matt schroeder just discovered via a freedom of information act request that during the war in iraq iraqi insurgents found novel ways to make old weapons work like new ones these photos show troops in iraq playing around with some do it yourself rocket launchers including one that uses a person's head as a launching pad shorter believes the photo is from two thousand and nine and the improvised rocket launchers used parts made from russian made rockets taken from

the saddam era stockpiles iraqi militants aren't the only ones playing macgyver with any weapons they can get their hands on arms specialists have seen similar ingenuity coming from libya and syria and there is more news from syria today the federal register included the syrian rebel group a job lot all nusra on its list of terrorist organizations the state departments of the job at all news rides ties with al qaeda there's no question that it is using some of the same tactics the rebel group has taken credit for multiple suicide bombings in syria targeting the government of bashar al assad when the state department determines that a group is a terrorist organization it blocks americans from doing any business with that group and freezes any u.s. assets it may have now the move could signal that the u.s. is looking to isolate the more radical elements of the syrian opposition as this civil war in the country enters its twenty second month. well that is going to.